Nothing - At all

Hey, I'm new here but I was wondering if anyone else had pondered on these same thoughts as me?

Something that always gets me confused is when I imagine nothing, at all. It'd probably be like death or before being born but that's not what gets me. It's just, the fact that nothing may have never existed and there was no time, nothing. I probably don't need to worry about this since I doubt in my lifetime anything like this will happen.

I'm not talking before the big bang, I'm talking as if there was nothing that could have even caused the big bang. Just, nothing.

The other is the inevitability of our death. Eventually everything will die, stars will die out, everything. We fight our death so much but there is a time when there will be no lifeforms to observe the universe, maybe some may get the technology to eventually survive but there is still the inevitability of death from the universe expanding too much. In my lifetime I don't need to worry about this, but I worry for the children of my children and their children etc. It's a problem that is inevitable.(Though I believe we will most likely kill eachother for lust of power unless something major changes before this time.)

I just guess this is one of the problems with not being religious, knowing there is nothing out there watching over you and so you don't have that peace of mind.

Ah well, just my thoughts.

(Btw, grammar fails, its 36 degrees and I just got home >.< Probably a huge cluster of bad grammar there.)

Replies to This Discussion

Radu Andreiu:I don't think that nothing could possibly exist. I mean, if
there is no first cause, there is no valid, logical question
about how and why things exist.

Hawking was asked the old question "what was there before the "Big Bang".
He said "it's like asking what is there on the surface of the Earth, 1 mile north of the north pole. It's a meaningless question." By asking the question, or "what is nothingness", we're imposing constraints on it, that don't and can't exist.
Cause & effect, as well as time and space don't exist. You can't ask the question in any meaningful way, and if you come around to phrasing the question correctly considering all the implications, you answer yourself.

Dan:
>there is a time when there will be no lifeforms to observe
>the universe, maybe some may get the technology to eventually
>survive but there is still the inevitability of death from the
>universe expanding too much.

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It is impossible to calculate in detail the long-range future of the universe without including the effects of life and intelligence. It is impossible to calculate the capabilities of life and intelligence without touching, at least peripherally, philosophical questions. If we are to examine how intelligent life may be able to guide the physical development of the universe for its own purposes, we cannot altogether avoid considering what the values and purposes of intelligent life may be.
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If our analysis of the long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without embarrassment.
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I shall make no further apology for mixing philosophical speculations with mathematical equations.
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The prevailing view (Weinberg, 1977) holds the future of open and closed universes to be equally dismal.
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I shall not discuss the closed universe in detail, since it gives me a feeling of claustrophobia to imagine our whole existence confined within the box (4). I only raise one question which may offer us a thin chance of survival.
Supposing that we discover the universe to be naturally closed and doomed to collapse, is it conceivable that by intelligent intervention, converting matter into radiation and causing energy to flow purposefully on a cosmic scale, we could break open a closed universe and change the topology of space-time so that only a part of it would collapse and another part of it would expand forever? I do not know the answer to this question. If it turns out that the universe is closed, we shall still have about 10^10 years to explore the possibility of a technological fix that would burst it open.

I am mainly interested in the open cosmology, since it seems to give enormously greater scope for the activities of life and intelligence. Horizons in the open cosmology expand indefinitely.
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I shall discuss three principal questions within the framework of the open universe with the metric (6).

(1) Does the universe freeze into a state of permanent physical quiescence as it expands and cools?
(2) Is it possible for life and intelligence to survive indefinitely?
(3) Is it possible to maintain communication and transmit information across the constantly expanding distances between galaxies?

These three questions will be discussed in detail...
Tentatively, I shall answer them with a no, a yes, and a maybe. My answers are perhaps only a reflection of my optimistic philosophical bias. I do not expect everybody to agree with the answers. My purpose is to start people thinking seriously about the questions.
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If, as I hope, my answers turn out to be right, what does it mean? It means that we have discovered in physics and astronomy an analog to the theorem of Goedel (1931) in pure mathematics....
If my view of the future is correct, it means that the world of physics and astronomy is also inexhaustible; no matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory.
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This list of time scales of physical processes makes no claim to be complete. Undoubtedly many other physical processes will be occurring with time scales as long as, or longer than, those I have listed. The main conclusion I wish to draw from my analysis is the following: So far as we can imagine into the future, things continue to happen. In the open cosmology, history has no end.

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The universe that I have explored in a preliminary way in these lectures is very different from the universe which Steven Weinberg had in mind when he said, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
I have found a universe growing without limit in richness and complexity, a universe of life surviving forever and making itself known to its neighbors across unimaginable gulfs of space and time.
Is Weinberg's universe or mine closer to the truth? One day, before long, we should know.

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Yes, he goes on to speculate about how, even after all matter is inside black holes and they've all decayed, some form of intellect may be possible.

But I do point out that the concepts of eternity or infinity, seem to be human fictional/hypothetical constructs. They don't seem to occur in the natural world at all...